


A Man His Age

by noodleinabarrel



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aging, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Growing Old, Growing Old Together, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Old Age, Old Married Couple, Old Married Spirk Challenge, Star Trek: Generations Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-22 02:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8269612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodleinabarrel/pseuds/noodleinabarrel
Summary: Jim tries to carry a heavy box up the stairs. Despite his husband's objections, Spock insists on helping him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [Old Married Spirk Challenge](http://oldmarriedspirk.tumblr.com/) 2016!
> 
> Thanks so much to [EntreNous](http://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous) for beta reading!

“Damnit,” Jim muttered, staring at the tall box leaning against the bottom of the stairwell with his name addressed at the top. Perfect timing. After several frustrated comm calls to the supplier, the bed frame he had ordered two months ago had finally arrived. But, of course, the lift was broken. Again. Dropping his grocery bags to the floor, Jim tugged at the box, testing its heft. Not so bad. But when he shifted it a few inches across the floor, Jim’s biceps immediately protested as if they had endured an intense weight training regime. With a grumbled expletive, he leaned the cardboard behemoth against the wall once again and rubbed at his twitching muscles.

“What the ever loving—” Jim kicked the bottom of the box and scowled at it. “How the hell am I supposed to get this stupid thing upstairs?” Maybe he should have thought about that before buying an all wood bed frame complete with headboard and under shelving for their fifth floor apartment. If Spock were here, he would announce that this conundrum was another one of Jim’s grandly illogical schemes since bed frames were unnecessary pieces of furniture.

Sometimes it was difficult to explain the symbolic notion of household items to Spock. If Jim’s husband had his way, their whole apartment would be a square possessing little more than a synthesizer, two chairs, and some cutlery within its four white walls. But a bed represented a couple’s relationship, a place where they took repose, aired their worries to a sympathetic ear before sleep, and revered each other’s bodies. The two men had been sleeping on a squeaking metal piece of junk ever since Jim had taken a teaching position at the Academy two months ago and they had moved into the Starfleet-assigned apartment. Each time Jim rolled over in his sleep, the screech issued from the old bedframe had assaulted Spock’s sensitive ears until the annoyance transferred through their bond had jolted Jim awake, gasping about mice-infested starships. Spock had abandoned the bed for the living room carpet and Jim was sick of seeing Spock curl up on the floor with a pillow and a few dozen quilts like a penniless Academy student who had just spent his last credit on a can of soup. Not to mention Jim’s back had been protesting ever since he’d gotten lonely and joined Spock.

Taking a deep breath, Jim rolled up his sleeves and stretched his shoulders. He’d fought a Gorn, taken down a few Klingons, and lived with a Vulcan for half of his life. No way was a box defeating James T. Kirk. Wrapping both arms around the monolith, Jim hefted it into his arms with a grunt, and shuffled foot by foot up the first step, and then the next, his knees cracking. He got up half a flight of stairs before his arms gave in, the box falling with an echoing _thunk_ onto the steps. Yelling a stream of obscenities, Jim dove at the box, gripping the edge before it could slide down the stairs, wasting all his efforts.

Scrawny Tom Jenkins, a cadet in Jim’s first year tactics class, poked his head out of his apartment door on the second floor landing. “Oh hey, Admiral Kirk!” he called with a wave. He stepped toward the banister, a frown creasing his child-like face. “Better watch out, sir. You’ll break your neck if you aren’t careful.”

“I’m fine,” Jim yelled around the box, which he’d pulled, out of breath, armpits soaking, back into his arms. He took another step upwards, holding a groan behind clenched teeth. “Almost there!”

“You live on the fifth floor,” Tom fretted, blond curls falling across his forehead as he rushed forward. “A man your age shouldn’t be carrying such heavy things. Let me help you, sir.”

A man his age, Jim fumed to himself, could carry a simple box up the damn stairs if he wanted to. And maybe it wouldn’t be half as difficult if he didn’t have a boy half his age getting in the way.

Sighing, Jim tried not to grimace at young innocent Tom who had no idea at eighteen how his bones would one day tire and dissolve, arthritis creeping up his joints whenever a chill set in. Jim never did at that age either. He thought he’d be running up stairs with boxes until the day his body gave out when he was one hundred and fifty.

“I’m fine, Jenkins. Get back to studying. You’ll need all the help you can get to pass my exam on Monday.” Jim winked as he shuffled past, unable to contain the grin that spread across his face at the sight of Jenkins’ sudden pallor and tightening shoulders. 

Once he heard Jenkins' door shut, Jim released another hiss of insults at the monstrous box as he dragged it up the third flight. When he reached the top, Jim rewarded himself with a fifteen minute break, slowly easing the box against the wall lest a crashing thump raise the attention of another well-meaning neighbor. He rested on the top step with a silent curse at the sharp pain in his lower back.

When he heard Ms. Ricci clamoring up the stairs with her twin eight-year-olds, Jim jumped to his feet and leaned against the box, pulling his communicator out of his pocket to flick through nonexistent messages.

“Hi, Mr. Kirk,” the twins yelled as they rushed past, their mom smiling up at him from several steps below.

“Alright, Jim?” She looked past him at the box. “I’m going to have words with maintenance if they don’t get the lift fixed soon.”

Jim beamed. “You’re not the only one.”

“Need some help with that? I can get the kids to grab one end. It’ll help them wear off some energy before bed.”

Laughing, Jim shook his head. “I can manage. But thank you.”

“Are you sure?” She frowned. “It looks heavy.”

“Completely.”

“Mom!” one of the kids yelled, and Ms. Smith hurried off with a wave over her shoulder. When the door creaked open, and slammed shut, cutting off the chatter of children’s voices, Jim shoved his comm back in his pocket, and resumed his struggle up the stairs. After another flight, his heart banging against his chest, Jim flopped down on the landing for a second breather.

When his heartrate once again beat regularly, Jim pulled himself off the floor before he nodded off. Lethargy already weighed on his eyelids and it wasn’t even six o’clock. Heaving the box to the next set of stairs, Jim steadied his left foot on each step and then the right, one-by-one, before braving the next ascent. Once, Jim had scaled mountains without fear. But now, an image of his brittle body heaped at the bottom of the stairs, his neck snapped at a crooked angle, waiting for Spock to find when he returned home, shocked Jim into precaution.

“Jim!” Spock’s voice called from below, almost knocking Jim off his precarious feet. “You will cause serious injury to your spine.”

Turning his head, Jim blew upward at a curl clinging to the beads of sweat along his brow. “I’m fine!” he yelled back, continuing his inanely slow progress.

“Negative, Jim,” Spock replied, jogging up the stairs, the bags of groceries Jim had abandoned hooked under his arms. “Your face has turned an alarming shade of crimson.”

“That’s because,” Jim huffed, taking another lumbering step forwards, “I’m so happy,” he stopped for a gulp of air, “to see you.”

“Although the feeling is mutual, I highly doubt this flush,” Spock’s warm hand pressed against Jim’s burning cheek, “is caused by my presence, but the overexertion generated by conveying an item approximately twice your body weight up thirty-eight steps.”

“It’s really not that heavy.” Jim smiled. Gods, even the muscles along his mouth felt strained. He wondered when he’d become so old and frail.

“I fear the weight of this large box will send you tumbling down the stairs into an early grave.” Spock placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Please, allow me to assist you.” 

“It’s ok. I’ve got this.” He lumbered up another two steps, his knees squeaking like the wheels on the old twentieth-century automobile his grandmother had let him tinker with in her garage when he was a child. Spock followed him.

“What is contained within the box?” Spock questioned, blocking Jim’s path. “I hope it is worth risking the stability of your back.”

Shifting grudgingly to the left, Jim bypassed him. “A new bed frame,” Jim replied. “To replace that junky thing our apartment came with. It was supposed to be a surprise though.” Jim mock-pouted. “Was hoping to have it set up before you got back. You’re early.”

“I completed my duties at the embassy expediently so a greater portion of the evening would be free to spend within your company.”

While Jim was grinning stupidly at his husband’s thoughtfulness, Spock moved to obstruct Jim’s path on the next step, resting his hands behind his back. “Although I am grateful to you for purchasing a new frame for our mattress, the situation is not so dire that the item must be placed in our room this instant.”

“Ha,” Jim breathed. “If you keep looming over me all shadowy and forbidding, the situation in my libido is going to get really dire. Then you’ll regret leaving this thing lying across the stairs.” He nodded at the box.

Spock lifted an eyebrow. “It is in your nature to make salacious comments when you are trying to distract me from stating factual observations regarding your illogical sense of pride.”

“If I can’t carry this little box up a few stairs, all I’ll have left is my pride.” Jim shrugged, grinning at Spock around the box.  

“If you throw out your back, even your nonsensical pride will abandon you.” Spock glared at him like a wise man on the rock watching his foolish husband grapple with a sinking cardboard life raft.

Jim scowled as he shuffled around Spock. “My back’s fine.”

“The box is larger than your frame can safely carry. You are experiencing denial.”

Leaning the box against the railing, Jim pressed his cheek against the cardboard, breathing heavily. “You’re going to keep hassling me until I let you help.”

“Affirmative,” Spock replied, his lips twitching softly.

“Fine,” Jim sighed. “Take the other end.”

Stepping down, Spock bent gracefully to lift the lower end of the box, raising it easily. Jim’s stomach twisted with jealousy.

“Vulcan physical strength is thirty-three point six percent greater than humans’. There is no point comparing your muscular abilities with my own,” Spock intoned, picking up on Jim’s negative thoughts through their bond.

“My pride doesn’t care much for logic.” Jim hefted the opposite end of the box, his overstressed arms shaking despite Spock’s assistance.

“I have noticed,” Spock replied, proceeding up the stairs slowly, obviously to accommodate Jim’s slower pace. 

“It would probably be easier if you just carried this thing up by yourself.”

Spock glanced up from his vigilant focus on Jim’s steps. “A load is much easier borne when the weight is distributed between two people.”

Jim smiled at the sentiment. He suspected Spock was trying to prevent his husband’s foolish pride from further injury, however illogical the act. And Jim loved him for it. 

Slowly but surely, the two lugged the box up the remaining flights, easing the box onto the floor of their bedroom just as Jim’s arms, back, knees, hands, and pretty much every bone in his body were about to give up and call it a day. 

“It was an uncommonly heavy box,” Spock stated as his eyes followed the line of Jim’s arms, likely feeling the flick and tremor of muscles under clothing and skin. If Jim wasn’t so peeved at his body for being useless, he might have had a chance to feel turned on by Spock’s quiet attention.

“That’ll be the fine-grain oak wood,” Jim replied. He rummaged at the desk for a pair of scissors, and knelt down to slice the tape from the edges of the box. “No more squeaking. We can test it once it’s set up.” Jim winked and Spock immediately raised an eyebrow, exasperation pricking at the back of Jim’s mind as Spock pretended not to be amused.

“Perhaps,” Spock replied slyly as Jim huffed. After twenty years of marriage and a sexually tense friendship before that, Spock still knew how to play hard to get. “If the arduous task of lifting the box to our living quarters and compiling the parts into a functional bed frame has not exhausted you, there may yet be time to test the functionality of the bed with our combined weight.”

Jim coughed out an unintelligible sound, half laugh, half offended snort. “If I don’t have enough energy left to make love to you, then I might as well drop dead now and put myself out of my misery.” He lifted several planks from the box and dropped them onto the carpet carelessly, the weight falling from his wilting hands.

Spock’s mouth pressed into a strict line. “I respectfully request that you do no such thing.” He kneeled beside Jim, helping to remove the parts from the box, eyeing the sheet of instructions.

“Don’t worry; I won’t if I can help it. I’ll go fish out the screwdriver.” Jim stood, freezing as a sharp pain jolted through his lower back. “Damnit,” he muttered.

Spock glanced up from the bags of screws and posts he had begun arranging across the carpet. “Jim?”

“I think I just threw out my back.” He pressed a hand to his hips attempting to straighten a few centimeters until his spine yelled with a shuddering throb. “Damnit,” he repeated, louder this time.

Spock hopped up and took Jim’s arm. “Can you walk?” he asked.

Jim breathed in sharp gasps, trying to ease through the pain. “I don’t think so. Even breathing feels like hell.”

“Will you allow me to assist you?”

“If you don’t, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon,” Jim moaned.

As Spock wrapped his arm around Jim’s waist, maneuvering his body until he lay prone along the floor, Jim waited for the Vulcan version of an “I told you so.” It never came.

“Why don’t I ever listen to you?” Jim grunted.

Spock blinked down at him. “A question I have been asking myself for the past thirty-five years.” He tucked a pillow under Jim’s neck and beneath the small of his back. “Are you moderately comfortable given the extent of your injury?”

“Yeah, as long as I don’t move anything,” Jim grinned sheepishly. “Looks like I’m done for after all. No sex for us tonight.”

A small sigh escaped Spock’s lips. “This is an unfortunate occurrence. However, I can wait until your recovery.”

“Always so considerate,” Jim laughed around the pain, tapping Spock’s fingers weakly with his own. “Sorry, guess we’re stuck sleeping on the floor for now.”

“Allowing you to lie indisposed upon the floor would be careless.” Spock frowned, staring down at Jim as if he were irritated such a ridiculous thought had been given voice. “I will assemble the new bed frame.”

“No. I ordered the frame as a present for you—no way am I letting you put it together. Just leave it and come cuddle with me on the floor.”

“It is of no consequence.” Despite Jim’s mumbled protestations, Spock returned to the open box and continued to read the assembly instructions.

Jim turned his neck to watch Spock fiddle with the screwdriver. “Are you sure you’re supposed to attach the upper posts first?”

Spock’s eyes remained on his work. “Step one of the instructions say to attach part one to part two with screws number A and B. That is what I am doing.”

“Looks all wrong to me. Instructions for these things are written by dimwits who’ve never put a piece of furniture together in their lives.”

“You are likely incorrect, Jim.” Spock moved to attach the opposite end posts. “As you may remember when we assembled our dresser, I objected to a similar complaint you expressed against the accompanying instructions, despite their being written by the creators of the furniture. Because of your deviance from the steps, we were required to disassemble the pieces and reassemble them according to the instructions, which added an additional two hours to the construction of the dresser even though it was described on the box it came in as ‘easy to build.’”

“One man’s creatively assembled dresser, is another Vulcan’s piece of junk.” Jim shifted, trying to get comfortable on the mounds of blankets Spock had arranged around him. The sound of metal scratching against wood and the light thump of Spock’s footsteps lulled Jim, his eyes drifting shut.

*

Hands pressed firmly against his back, both painful and soothing.

“Ughf,” Jim mumbled, his mouth full of blanket. He dashed drool from the corner of his lip. Spock must have lifted him onto the bed when he passed out.

“I apologize if I roused you,” Spock murmured, hands working diligently against the knot in Jim’s lower back. “I have finished constructing our new bed and am attempting to ease the strain upon your extremities.”

“Much.” Jim groaned. “Appreciated.”

“There is a pot of plomeek soup brewing on the stove if you are hungry. A nutritious meal is sure to help revive your strength.”

“How is plomeek soup going to help my back?” Jim laughed, then cringed, the echoing movement rippling through his back.

“Unknown. However, it cannot do any harm.” Spock’s hands paused at the hem of his shirt. “If you are able to lift your body approximately five centimeters, I would like to remove your shirt in order to apply pressure point techniques to more effectively soothe your discomfort.”

Without a second thought, Jim raised himself on his elbows with a grunt as Spock shimmied the sweater up his stomach, and carefully over each shoulder and arm. Flopping back down onto their new, squeak free, bed, Jim panted, out of breath after the small movement. At some point in their relationship, whether it was after too many away missions gone wrong, or Jim’s first lingering cold when they had started living together and Spock had endured the sniffling and used tissue mountains with supreme patience, Jim’s pride had chipped under Spock’s discreet chisel. And now, as he sighed against the pillow and allowed his husband to baby him, Jim felt his shame crumble under Spock’s hands. Even if he couldn’t stop his body from falling apart, Jim was glad Spock was here to restack all his tumbling bricks—that he was growing old with someone who bore his aging partner’s frailties with grace, and a wondrous lack of pity, as if the new winkles that marred Jim’s face every year meant nothing, and changed nothing between them. He may have lost all the dignity of his former youth, but Spock was a more than fair replacement.

“How does that feel?” Spock increased the pressure.

“Amazing,” Jim wheezed.

*

“It hurts when I move,” Jim groaned, propped against the pillows on their new bed. “Starfleet PR is going to blow a gasket.”

“Considering their creativity in the past when they have been required to elucidate your more impulsive command decisions to the public, I am sure they will manage.”

“I’m a little disappointed though,” Jim mumbled around a forkful of scrambled eggs Spock had insisted on feeding him. Who was Jim to discourage him? He had been right about Jim throwing out his back. And the insistent look on Spock’s face as he held the fork to Jim’s lips had been too adorable to refuse. “Was looking forward to seeing the Enterprise B’s maiden voyage,” Jim continued. “Standing on the ship’s bridge again would’ve been a nostalgic blast to the past.”

“You are hardly in any state for any sort of blasting, Jim.” Spock sliced a pancake into quarters, swirling each piece in a pool of maple syrup, just as Jim liked.

“Fair enough,” Jim sighed, imagining the sights and species this new incarnation of his old ship would see on their own deep space missions. A new crew, another adventure. Meanwhile, Professor Kirk had a stack of papers to grade that a week in bed would force him to finish.

“Perhaps,” Spock watched his husband chew, “we could combine our vacation hours and visit Vulcan. There will be a clear view of the Achelois Cloud during the trip that my help satisfy your desire to experience nostalgia.”

“Mmm,” Jim swallowed. “Some time in the void sounds like the perfect medicine.”

“Once you are able to walk again, that is,” Spock added.

“Of course,” Jim grinned, leaning forward to press syrupy lips against Spock’s, ignoring the complaining twinge from his back.

***

**Author's Note:**

> And voilà! There is my domestic fluffy fix-it to Generations. Thank the stars for large boxes and thrown out backs!
> 
> If you enjoyed and would like to share this fic, here's a convenient Tumblr reblog link: <http://noodleinabarrel.tumblr.com/post/152620515040/also-on-ao3-written-for-the-oldmarriedspirk>
> 
> If you'd like to keep in touch, I can be found on [Tumblr](http://noodleinabarrel.tumblr.com)!


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